6.1

n
Export Recovery Plan Steps on page 76
You can export the steps of a recovery plan in various formats for future reference, or to keep a hard
copy backup of your plans.
n
View and Export a Recovery Plan History on page 77
You can view and export reports about each run of a recovery plan, test of a recovery plan, or test
cleanup.
n
Delete a Recovery Plan on page 77
You can delete a recovery plan if you do not need it.
n
Recovery Plan Status Reference on page 77
You can monitor the status of a recovery plan and determine the operation that is allowed in each
state. The state of a recovery plan is determined by the states of the protection groups within the plan.
Testing a Recovery Plan
When you create or modify a recovery plan, test it before you try to use it for planned migration or for
disaster recovery.
By testing a recovery plan, you ensure that the virtual machines that the plan protects recover correctly to
the recovery site. If you do not test recovery plans, an actual disaster recovery situation might not recover all
virtual machines, resulting in data loss.
Testing a recovery plan exercises nearly every aspect of a recovery plan, although Site Recovery Manager
makes several concessions to avoid disrupting ongoing operations on the protected and recovery sites.
Recovery plans that suspend local virtual machines do so for tests as well as for actual recoveries. With this
exception, running a test recovery does not disrupt replication or ongoing activities at either site.
If you use vSphere Replication, when you test a recovery plan, the virtual machine on the protected site can
still synchronize with the replica virtual machine disk files on the recovery site. The vSphere Replication
server creates redo logs on the virtual machine disk files on the recovery site, so that synchronization can
continue normally. When you perform cleanup after running a test, the vSphere Replication server removes
the redo logs from the disks on the recovery site and persists the changes accumulated in the logs to VM
disks.
If you use array-based replication, when you test a recovery plan, the virtual machines on the protected site
are still replicated to the replica virtual machines' disk files on the recovery site. During test recovery, the
array creates a snapshot of the volumes hosting the virtual machines' disk files on the recovery site. Array
replication continues normally while the test is in progress. When you perform cleanup after running a test,
the array removes the snapshots that were created earlier as part of test recovery workflow.
You can run test recoveries as often as necessary. You can cancel a recovery plan test at any time.
Before running a failover or another test, you must successfully run a cleanup operation. See “Clean Up
After Testing a Recovery Plan,” on page 73.
Permission to test a recovery plan does not include permission to run a recovery plan. Permission to run a
recovery plan does not include permission to test a recovery plan. You must assign each permission
separately. See “Assign Site Recovery Manager Roles and Permissions,” on page 15.
Site Recovery Manager Administration
66 VMware, Inc.